Chinese police resolved 2,704 cultural relics cases between August last year and Nov 30 this year, and arrested 5,368 suspects, effectively curbing such crimes, the Ministry of Public Security said on Dec 13.

About 61,000 cultural relics have been recovered amid an ongoing operation launched by the ministry and the National Cultural Heritage Administration in August 2020.

Public security organs and cultural relics departments had focused on the recovery of cultural relics, along with breaking criminal chains and discovering their financial backers, Zheng Xiang, an inspector with the ministry's criminal investigation bureau, told a news conference in Beijing.

The ministry and administration jointly established a stolen and lost cultural relics information publishing platform in May 2016 that provided strong support for fighting such crimes and recovering cultural relics, he said.

The platform, which supports both Chinese and English, has collected data on more than 2,800 stolen or lost cultural relics and has publicly released 626 pieces of information about them.

It has also accepted clues from the public related to cultural relics crimes.

Public security organs have identified and rectified over 180,000 potential security hazards and problems related to cultural relics over the past three years, Zheng said, with such work continuing.

"With the efforts of the public security organs and cultural relics departments, the trend of cultural relics crimes has been effectively curbed," he said.

The number of cultural relics crimes recorded last year fell 20 percent year-on-year to the lowest level since 2012, the ministry said.

"However, we should be soberly aware that the current security situation of cultural relics is still not optimistic," Zheng said.

"Crimes such as excavation and theft of cultural relics continue to occur, cultural relics crime is becoming more and more professionalized and intelligent, and it is accelerating to spread online, which brings new challenges to the crackdown and prevention work."

Chen Peijun, director of the administration's supervision and inspection department, said there are over 760,000 immovable cultural relics in China, as well as many unknown ancient sites and tombs scattered all over the country, all of which are coveted by criminals.

The administration has urged cultural relics departments to increase investment in security and protection facilities and promote the standardization of security management for cultural relics, Chen said.

Since 2016, the central government has spent about 1.2 billion yuan ($188 million) a year to support more than 2,400 security and protection projects at major national-level historical and cultural sites.

In May last year, police in Qianshan, Anhui province, received a report about the excavation of ancient tombs.

The local cultural relics department said the excavated site contained ancient tombs from the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) to the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

By July this year, police in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shaanxi and Anhui had captured 29 major suspects in the case and had seized more than 400 pieces of suspected cultural relics.